Traditional carpet tack strips for attaching carpet to a floor in a room are composed of strips of wood or other material that are nailed to the floor around the edges of a room. A typical carpet tack strip is approximately four feet in length, about an inch wide and about a quarter of an inch in thickness, with the bottom surface of the strip positioned on the floor and fastened to the floor with a plurality of nails driven through the strip and into the floor. A four-foot strip typically requires nine nails to secure the strip to the floor.
The upper surface of the carpet tack strip comprises a plurality of sharp-edged spikes that extend upwardly from the upper surface of the strip and project above it at an angle inclined with respect to the upper surface of the strip such that the spikes project toward an adjacent wall when installed. The carpet is secured to the spikes on one wall and stretched across and secured to the spikes on remaining walls.
A disadvantage of traditional carpet strips is the need for nails (tacks) to secure the strips into the floor. When floor is made of concrete, for example, installing the strips may present difficulties, however, because driving concrete nails into old concrete is sometimes impossible. Further, certain types of concrete flooring (e.g., Terrazzo) are so hard that they will not accept concrete nails, and the carpet installer must drill into it in order to affix strips.
One option for fastening carpet strips to concrete floors is to use an adhesive such as Chemrex® brand adhesive. The adhesive is applied to the strip and the strip is pressed onto the floor. While adhesive provides a good strong bond between the strip and the floor, the cure time—for some adhesives the time between adhesion of the strip to the floor and when the strip is ready for the carpet to be stretched—is at least two hours, and possibly more.
More recently, hot glue guns have been used to apply carpet strips to floors. However, these devices must be plugged into an electrical source, and also require some cure time.
The carpet strips of the present disclosure provide an advantage over the previous methods for attaching carpet strips to flooring, in that no nails or other fasteners are required to be driven into the floor. This is because the strips are affixed to the flooring using peel-and-stick tape that is adhered to the carpet strip and to the floor. Further, no cure time is required, and the carpet may be stretched immediately after the carpet strips are affixed to the floor.
For purposes of summarizing the invention, certain aspects, advantages, and novel features of the invention have been described herein. It is to be understood that not necessarily all such advantages may be achieved in accordance with any one particular embodiment of the invention. Thus, the invention may be embodied or carried out in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other advantages as may be taught or suggested herein.